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Anonymous

Anonymous (used as a mass noun) is a loosely associated hacktivist group. It originated in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan, representing the concept of many online and offline community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic, digitized global brain. It is also generally considered to be a blanket term for members of certain Internet subcultures, a way to refer to the actions of people in an environment where their actual identities are not known. It strongly opposes Internet censorship and surveillance, and has hacked various government websites. It has also targeted major security corporations. Its members can be distinguished in public by the wearing of Guy Fawkes masks.

In its early form, the concept has been adopted by a decentralized online community acting anonymously in a coordinated manner, usually toward a loosely self-agreed goal, and primarily focused on entertainment. Beginning with 2008, the Anonymous collective has become increasingly associated with collaborative,...

Activists from Anonymous have issued a call for nationwide protests in a "day of rage" this Thursday, a week after a similar appeal from the group drew thousands of people in support of demonstrators in Ferguson, Missouri.

A British man stands accused of hacking into the computer servers for the U.S. Federal Reserve, stealing confidential information and posting it online. The U.S. Attorney's Office in New York City announced the charges and unsealed an indictment agai...

The British spy agency GCHQ used hacking techniques, including distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, against the hacking collective Anonymous, according to new documents leaked by Edward Snowden. Anonymous hackers were attacking websites with...

A 38-year-old man was sentenced to two years probation and a hefty fine for participating in a distributed denial-of-service attack organized by hacker collective Anonymous against the webpage of Koch Industries in 2011. The surprising part? He only ...

An admitted member of the online hacking group Anonymous received the maximum sentence Friday from a judge in U.S. federal court in New York City. U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska sentenced 28-year-old Jeremy Hammond of Chicago to 10 years in priso...

The hacktivist collective Anonymous pledged to support protesters in Turkey by attacking "every Internet and communication asset of the Turkish government." Now they've been joined in their fight by another infamous group of hackers, the Syrian Elect...

As clashes in Turkey continue, the hacker collective Anonymous has decided to join the protests. Yesterday, on Anonymous' "official" Twitter account YourAnonNews, the hacktivists announced #OpTurkey. The group also set up a website, Operation Turkey,...

Another Anonymous hacker has surrendered to the long arm of justice. Jeremy Hammond, 28, a political activist and hacker, pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge for breaching the servers of the U.S. private intelligence firm Stratfor and passing its i...

Officials at the American military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have shut down Wi-Fi access throughtout the camp and banned the use of any social networks following threats from hacktivist collective Anonymous. Anonymous announced "Operation Guantana...

Ascribing a consistent political agenda to the hacktivist collective Anonymous is almost impossible. Anyone can claim the "Anonymous" moniker and use it for good or evil, provided that his or her work is subversive. This time, a number of hacktivists...

Hackers claiming affiliation with Anonymous took credit Thursday for defacing official North Korea-run Twitter and Flickr pages. The pages, which normally post pro-government propaganda aimed at outsiders, are now posting messages and pictures promot...

"Anonymous Korea" claimed to take down several North Korean state websites Saturday, just hours after North Korea said it has entered into a "state of war" with South Korea. North Korea's main official state website was back up and running, as of 5 p...

A day after a federal indictment accused him of helping hacktivist group Anonymous deface news websites, Matthew Keys has been suspended by Reuters, the company announced Friday. Keys, the deputy editor of social media for Reuters, was charged Thursd...

The world of social media journalism was in shock Thursday after Matthew Keys -- deputy social media editor for Reuters -- received a federal indictment alleging that he helped Anonymous hack his former employers. Keys, 26, is a popular figure on Twi...

The anarchic hacker collective Anonymous brought down a government website last month -- and now it wants to do the same for President Obama's State of the Union. "There will be no State of the Union Address on the web tonight," read a post on the co...

The Federal Reserve admitted Tuesday that it was hacked Sunday following claims from hacktivist group Anonymous that it had successfully breached the Fed's security systems. Hackers accessed a Fed internal server and broke into the database of the St...

Hacktivist group Anonymous took over the U.S. Sentencing Commission website this weekend, turning ussc.gov into the classic arcade game "Asteroids," complete with Nyan Cat shooter. The initial hack on Saturday embedded a video on the site issuing a s...

The hacktivist group Anonymous hacked the U.S. federal sentencing website early Saturday, using the page to make a brazen and boisterous declaration of "war" on the U.S. government. The group claims mysterious code-based "warheads," named for each of...

The Anonymous hacktivist group appears to have hacked MIT's website, leaving a tribute for Aaron Swartz, the online activist who recently committed suicide. Swartz was a the co-founder of Demand Progress and founder of Infogami, a service later merge...

Twitter on Wednesday suspended @YourAnonNews, an Anonymous-affiliated account with 750,000 followers. The handlers behind the suspended account quickly migrated to @YANBackUp, which was set up for just this occasion: This account will remain dorment ...

A day after Instagram's brazen new privacy policy landed on our virtual desks with a thud, the Interwebs are a-flurry with outrage and opposition. Much of that outrage was taking place on Twitter, where the hashtag #boycottInstagram was trending earl...

After the re-escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict last week, hackers across the world have declared virtual war on Israel, attacking and defacing websites and social media profiles. Tuesday night, a hacker's group called ZHC claimed its fir...

Update: Mashable received this statement from a Paypal spokesperson: "It appears that the exploit was not directed at PayPal after all, it was directed at a company called ZPanel. The original story that started this and was retweeted by some of the ...

After a more than two-year love affair, Hacktivist collective Anonymous is distancing itself from Wikileaks. In a tweet sent from one of the many accounts controlled by Anonymous, the group said goodbye to the whistleblowing website controlled by Jul...

Swedish authorities on Monday raided the host company of many popular torrent and sports-streaming sites, knocking them offline. In response, an Anonymous member vowed revenge against the Swedish government. PRQ.se, which was founded by two co-founde...

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